Alice Fleurkens in Sweaburg, Ontario, has shared her garden with us several times on the GPOD, but today she sent in some photos of a friend’s garden, which is just gorgeous. This is my friend Anna’s garden. I had not been there for quite a while, and boy was I blown away by her little […]
Trees are among the most majestic plants in the landscape, and they are essential components of Earth’s ecology. We literally could not survive without these large, beautiful, and life-sustaining botanical wonders. However, unlike herbaceous plants, trees often require a considerable investment of time and money to reach their full potential in cultivated landscapes. Because there […]
Arianne gardens in a small city lot in chilly Minneapolis (Zone 4B) and fills her space with an abundance of beautiful flowers. Even more impressively, she grows many of her plants herself from seed. Notes of dark red and burgundy combined with gold foliage are repeated many times in this image, making this garden feel […]
Arianne is letting us into her beautiful garden today. I want to share my Zone 4B garden with you. This is a mixture of both perennials and annuals, mostly planted from seeds. The low evening light brings out the magical colors of this garden. In the foreground, bright red impatiens (Impatiens hawkeri, Zones 9–11 or […]
THE WORDS joy and delight figure prominently in writer Ross Gay‘s work, and so do moments he spends in his garden and descriptions of his relationship to plants. Now is that a coincidence that the garden is a main character in his books, books with the titles “Inciting Joy” and “The Book of Delights” and […]
We’re back for a second day of enjoying the beauty of late summer and early fall in Maxine Brisport’s Rotterdam, New York, garden. Classic blooms of the late summer garden include Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ (Zones 3–9) in the front, black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia fulgida, Zones 3–9) in the back, and the tall spire of a dark-leaved […]
My taste in plants is not exactly traditional. Somewhere along the line, when my gardening priorities shifted toward sustainability, my passion for pretty things morphed into an appreciation for survivalists. I’m fascinated by the ways in which plants have evolved to withstand voracious herbivores and fluctuating climate extremes. The tougher a plant is, the more […]
Today we’re in Rotterdam, New York, visiting with Maxine Brisport. Each year I gaze in wonderment of the beauty that graces my upstate New York garden—from the brilliant yellow of the gold forsythia shrub that tells me that spring has arrived, to the beauty of the white-and-pink anemone signaling that fall is looming. Now I […]
We’re back today in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, where Chris has, over the past few years, transformed his mostly empty yard into a lush, beautiful garden. Chris poses with his huge stand of sunflowers (Helianthus annuus, annual). These are so easy to grow, so beautiful, and so great for local wildlife. There aren’t just plants in the […]
Camellias (Camellia spp. and cvs., Zones 6–10) are mostly thought of as shade shrubs, and common camellia (Camellia japonica, Zones 7–9) varieties do look best in the shade. The foliage stays a dark glossy green instead of the sunburned yellow it would be with more sun. However, there are some camellias that do fine in […]